


of flowers, failure, and the virtues of friendship

by hydrospanners



Series: renegade [7]
Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic
Genre: F/M, Injury, Self-Doubt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2019-04-18 09:01:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14209719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hydrospanners/pseuds/hydrospanners
Summary: Jedi Knight Rhese Velaran realizes he might have more in common with his sister’s brash new padawan than either of them previously thought.





	of flowers, failure, and the virtues of friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr.

It’s a stupid impulse. Rhese realizes this as soon as the medbay doors swish open and Kira’s head whips round to look at him. She was supposed to be asleep--when he planned this out she was always asleep--but she is definitely awake and definitely not very happy to see him.

“Those for me?” She asks, eyebrow raised.

Rhese stands a little straighter. “It’s traditional to bring flowers when you visit the injured or infirm.”

“Traditional.” She snorts. “Right. They poisonous?”

“Poisonous?” He tries to force a laugh, but–-Well, there’s a reason his sister usually takes point with people. The noise he makes is more choking than laughter, and he hasn’t felt this awkward since he was a teenager. “No, of course not. I would never–-”

“Relax, Private. I was joking. Now are you going to hand those over or…?”

“Oh! Yes. Here.” Rhese shoves the flowers in her face, because apparently he can’t even hand people things like a normal sentient being. “Wait-–Private?”

“You look like your drill sergeant’s about to tear you a new one,” Kira explains, taking the bouquet off his hands. “Everything okay out there?”

“Sure. Rea took about five minutes to move things from the state room to the cantina. This time tomorrow no one will even remember what happened.”

Kira tilts her head back against the pillows, releasing a long, slow sigh. It’s a sigh he knows well, one he’s sighed many times himself. The sigh of someone who has tried their very best and failed anyway.

“I think I get it now,” she says. “Why you are–-The way you are.”

“Uh.”

Kira raises her head and looks at him, making that pinched face she always makes when she’s thinking hard, but there’s a lightness in her blue eyes. (The thought strikes him that it’s a very different blue than Rea’s eyes. Everything about Kira is different from his sister. He can’t remember why he ever thought they were so much alike.)

A smile spreads across Kira’s face and she gestures to the chair by her bed. “You might as well sit down and stay awhile, since you went to all this trouble.” She waves her bouquet in the air, wafting around a scent that reminds him he forgot to smell the flowers before buying them. It’s… pungent.

“Maybe I can put those in some water for you.” He glances at the counter on the other end of the room. “Over there.”

“Yeah.” She’s making a face again as she nods. “Good idea.”

There are no vases in the medbay, seeing as it’s a  _medbay_  and not Duchess Organa’s parlour, but Rhese makes do with the largest flask he can find. The flowers don’t smell much less terrible on the other side of the room, but he’ll take whatever win he can get because somehow, he’s managed to screw up the very basic task of buying flowers for a girl. Well. Not a girl. A woman. But not a  _woman_ woman, just a friend woman. More of a coworker, really.

“Can I ask you something?” Kira asks once he’s settled into her bedside chair as casually as possible. Should he slouch more? Cross his legs? “Does this ever get easier?”

“What?” Rhese blinks too much, shifting in his chair as he tries to remember what they were talking about.

She kindly ignores his glaring weirdness. Rea wouldn’t have done that; she would have spent a solid twenty minutes teasing him mercilessly. The really are very different people.

“Your sister,” Kira says, drawing his attention back. “She makes everything look so damned easy.”

“Oh. That.”

“Yeah. That.”

Rhese lowers his gaze to his hands, trying to think of something reassuring to say. It’s not like things really  _are_  that easy for Rea. They both know how little she sleeps, how hard she works. They know perfectly well how many of those easy smiles are just disguises for panic. But knowing it doesn’t make it any easier to stand next to her with your own panic written all over your stupid face.

“I–” He starts. Stops. “I want to say something comforting here, but I’m not really good at that. And honestly? It doesn’t get easier. I’ve been trying to catch up to Rea for twenty-four years and believe me, getting used to falling behind doesn’t make it sting any less. If anything, it just makes things worse.”

“You’re right,” Kira says. “You suck at the reassuring thing.”

Rhese lifts his head to look at her and finds himself smiling. “I did warn you.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She smiles back. “Smug bastard.”

They lapse into a silence that’s more comfortable than awkward, which is really the most Rhese can ask for. He’s never been as easy with people as his sister; he’s always too aware of himself, too worried what kind of impression he’s making. Being able to sit like this with Kira is… nice.

“I keep trying to be a good Jedi,” she says after a time, her voice quieter than before. “I try to follow the Code, try to do what Kiwiiks taught me. But maybe Rea’s got it right. Maybe I’d be better off if I just didn’t give a fuck.”

“Is that what she told you?”

Kira snorts, shaking her head. “No. She never tells me to do anything. She’s supposed to be teaching me but all she does is give me jobs I can’t do and clean up after I make a mess of them. What am I supposed to learn from that?”

“That my sister is a terrible teacher?” He has vivid memories of all the things Rea tried to teach him back on Corellia. Boosting speeders and cheating at pazaak. Picking pockets. Talking to people. Her patience would hold for maybe ten minutes before she decided he could pick it up by just watching her do it for him. It never worked, but then, that’s what the holonet is for, isn’t it?

“Maybe. Or maybe I’m just not cut out to be a Jedi.” Kira sighs, and the particular note of wistfulness in her voice is one Rhese knows as well as the backs of his own hands. For all their disagreements–-loud,  _vigorous_ disagreements–-he’s beginning to think the two of them have more in common than not.

Being around Rea… There’s something larger than life about her. For a long time, he thought it was just him, that his sister only felt so  _big_  because he felt so small, that she swelled up to fill whatever it was he lacked.

Rhese knows better now. These last few months, he’s watched hundreds of people bend and shrink around her, watched them be sucked in and consumed. He’s watched Kira orbit around her, warping and stretching and trying to find her own path, only to be bent back in by Rea’s gravity. He’s watched his own struggle play out on Kira’s face.

Without really meaning to, Rhese reaches out to lay a hand on Kira’s arm. She jumps, just a little, and looks at him with wide eyes. Is his kindness really so shocking? Does she really think he’s that cold? Surely she can see he’s only ever wanted to help.

Rhese swallows the lump in his throat, trying to ignore how hard it is to look her in the face just now. “I know what you mean,” he says at last. “But there’s more than one way to be a Jedi. Rea’s way-–I can’t pretend she’s not effective, but I don’t think anyone else can make it work. Even Rea only makes it work half the time.”

She snorts. “Half the time is better than none of the time.”

“You’re better at this than you think, Kira.” Rhese gives her arm–-the good one he hopes–-a gentle squeeze. “I’ve been watching.”

She raises her eyebrows at him, her mouth twisting in a smile that can only be described as ‘wicked’.

“Not in a weird way!” Rhese backtracks quickly, stumbling over his own words as heat rushes into his traitorous cheeks. “Just in a–-a helpful way. I grew up with Rea. I know how it can be, following in her footsteps, trying to do what she does. I know how much it hurts. I only wanted to save you some of that.”

Kira nods along with his words, her expression thoughtful. “Can I be honest with you, Rhese?”

“Of course.” He schools his face into a matching solemnity as his stomach plummets to his knees. “I always prefer honesty.”

“You suck at helping.”

His heart clenches and for just a beat, Rhese forgets to breathe. He isn’t sure why he should be so affected. She’s just his sister’s ungrateful padawan; if she doesn’t want the advice of an experienced knight, then that’s–

“But thank you.” Kira’s smile returns but without its edge, the wicked look faded into something softer, more genuine. Something almost affectionate. “It’s good to not be the only idiot around here.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say–”

“Rhese.”

“Yes?”

“Just shut up now, okay?”

His mouth opens almost out of habit, but Rhese swallows his argument back down. If silence is the price of another few moments of this–-whatever  _this_  is–-then he’s happy to pay it.


End file.
